Barack Obama’s first inaugural was so memorable because of its historical significance: The first American of African ancestry was becoming president of the United States. As a piece of oratory, it is not considered one of the finest presidential inaugural addresses. Here is our take on the ten most memorable inaugural speeches delivered by American presidents:

1. Abraham Lincoln, 1865

As the Civil War neared its conclusion, the 16th president was inaugurated for a second time. In what is universally considered the greatest inaugural address in American history, he sought to bind the wounds of a nation torn asunder.

Highlight: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

2. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

FDR inherited a nation in the midst of its worst economic crisis ever and its worst political crisis since the Civil War. With fascism and communism on the rise in Europe, some fretted about the future of capitalism and representative democracy. The former New York governor tried to reassure the shaken populace.

Highlight: “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

3. John F. Kennedy, 1961

The best inaugural address of the modern era celebrated the youngest man ever elected president of the United States. The speech marked a generational shift in American leadership, a cultural revolution (the first Catholic ever to serve as president) and a fashion statement (check out the photos of Jackie).

Highlight 1: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage.”

Highlight 2: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Highlight 3: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

4. Theodore Roosevelt, 1905

The young president’s only inaugural address was a concise philosophical discourse on America’s rise to world power and the dramatic challenges created by the modern industrial economy. Next to Lincoln, Roosevelt was perhaps the most talented writer among U.S. presidents, and his 1905 address showed TR at his most cogent and powerful.

Highlight: “Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being … The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers.”

5. George Washington, 1789

The nation’s first president was no orator, and he was a great general but not a great writer. Still, he understood his place in history and the precarious future of the new republic. He spent much of his speech asking God’s blessing and spent much of the rest in self-deprecating rhetoric.

Highlight: “The magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”

6. William Henry Harrison, 1841

The retired general, famous for massacring Indians, was the young nation’s oldest president, and his inaugural address was the longest. It was, by any standards, a terrible speech — probably the worst inaugural address ever. But that’s not why it was memorable. Harrison developed pneumonia after droning on and on, and he died a month later.

Lowlight: “It was the remark of a Roman consul in an early period of that celebrated Republic that a most striking contrast was observable in the conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made in the former. However much the world may have improved in many respects in the lapse of upward of two thousand years since the remark was made by the virtuous and indignant Roman, I fear that a strict examination of the annals of some of the modern elective governments would develop similar instances of violated confidence.”

7. Thomas Jefferson, 1801

Washington had warned of “factions” and the French Revolution heightened fears of party divisions. But Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson quickly became fevered partisans after the first president’s retirement to Mount Vernon. After Republican Jefferson defeated Federalist Adams in 1800, he sought to tamp down the nascent party schism.

Highlight: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

8. Abraham Lincoln, 1861

The nation was on the verge of a secession crisis when Lincoln was smuggled into Washington under cover of darkness to become the 16th president. His speech is famous for its failed attempt to reassure Southern states and preserve the Union. Lincoln’s words — if he ever meant them — were soon rendered moot by events in South Carolina and beyond.

Highlight: “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that, by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that, ‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.'”

9. Harry Truman, 1949

He wasn’t an inspired speaker, but Harry Truman’s only inaugural address was memorable because it was the first ever to be televised. The result was the most-watched event in the history of television (up to that point). Its focus was almost exclusively on the menace of Communism, moving the president to the center of the Red Scare hysteria which Sen. Joe McCarthy hijacked from Truman a year later.

Highlight: “These differences between communism and democracy do not concern the United States alone. People everywhere are coming to realize that what is involved is material well-being, human dignity, and the right to believe in and worship God.”

10. Ronald Reagan, 1981

The former Hollywood star delivered a boffo performance in his new role as American president. His crisply written, masterfully delivered inaugural address was sharply conservative — the most pointed ideological inaugural speech since Truman’s in 1949. In it, Reagan delivered one of his most famous lines about the role of government. The speech marked the end of the New Deal era and the beginning of the conservative renaissance.

Highlight: “The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”